Tuesday, January 17, 2012

Window on Eurasia: Only 30 percent of Region Heads Have Good Chance to Win Elections, Russian Analyst Says

Paul Goble

Staunton,
January 17 – Only 30 percent of the heads of regions and republics in the
Russian Federation have a good chance to win re-election if Russian President
Dmitry Medvedev’s draft proposal to restore elections at that level of the
country’s political system is accepted by the Russian State Duma, according to
a Moscow expert.

But the
provisions of the final form of such legislation and the ways in which it might
be subverted by strong central executive power are already sparking discussions
in Moscow about whether Medvedev’s proposal constitutes a genuine return to
electoral democracy in the regions or whether it is a kind of window dressing
in advance of the March 4 presidential vote.

If the
heads of Russia’s federal subjects again are to be filled by popular vote,
Yevgeny Minchenko, the head of the International Institute of Political
Expertise, told the Novy region news agency yesterday, “one can expect a
serious rotation of the heads of regions” because only 30 of the incumbents
would likely win such votes (www.nr2.ru/moskow/367578.html).

The
others “have no chance” at all, he suggested. Among those with the least
chances of election are the heads of the republics of Adygeya,
Kabardino-Balkaria, Kalmykia, Karachayevo-Cherkessia, Karelia, Komi, North
Osetia, tyva, Udmurtia, and Chuvashia, an indication of just how unpopular
their leaders are among the non-Russian nations of the country.

Other
leaders likely to fail in any bid for election would be the heads of the
Krasnodar, Transbaikal, Perm, Primorsky and Stavropol kray, and the head of
Khakassia, yet another indication that non-Russians within the Russian
Federation who make up sizeable percentages of the population of these subjects
are also ready to vote for change.

Among
regional heads with mid-range chances to win a popular vote, the Moscow
political expert said, are the heads of Bahkortostan, Buryatiya, Daghestan,
Ingushetia, Mari El, Yakutia, Kamchatka and Krasnoyarsk kray. And mong those
with “the greatest chance” are the governors of places like Voronezh, Kemerovo,
and Kaluga as well as Chechnya’s Ramzan Kadyrov, Tatarstan President Rustam
Minikhanov and Mordovia head Nikolay Merkushkin.

Then,
Minchenko said, there are some special cases. Moscow’s currenthead has “not bad
chances” to be elected because “Moscow is so constructed that it is complicated
to restore competitive elections:” there are no “specifically Moscow media,”
and it is very difficult to conduct a “door to door” campaign since the numbers
of voters is so large.

But in
his comments to the news agency, Minchenko said his estimate may not matter
because the real issue is elsewhere: “Medvedev has come out with a proposal,
but [Prime Minister Vladimir] Putin is silent,” raising the question of what is
really going on and whether gubernatorial elections will in fact return.

In an
article in today’s “Nezavisimaya gazeta,” journalists Aleksey Gorbachev and
Ivan Rodin explore some of the details of Medvedev’s proposal, details that may
be changed in the course of parliamentary consideration or may be exploited in
ways that would reduce the significance of the restoration of such votes (www.ng.ru/politics/2012-01-17/1_gubernator.html).

According
to Medvedev’s draft, parties could nominate candidates but such candidates
would have to be confirmed in some way or other by the president, possibly a
face-saving measure for Putin who did away with gubernatorial voting or
possibly a way to vitiate popular sovereignty altogether. Candidates could also
win nomination by petition.

The
“Nezavisimaya” journalists say that sources in the Kremlin “assure that
consultations with the president will bear a purely voluntary character,” but
on the basis of their past experience, many Russians and indeed many Russian
parliamentarians may be deeply suspicious of such claims.

That is
all the more so because “before the mass protest actions,” President Medvedev
spoke about the return of gubernatorial elections “as an extremely distant
perspective,” and several years earlier,he said that “the return of the former
system of electing governments was not something [Russia] needed even a century
from now.”

Moreover,
in July 2011, Putin, the Moscow paper continues, “said that “there is ‘no
violation of the principles of democracy’” involved in the appointment rather
than election of governors. He added that elections only made the governors
corrupt because they allowed candidates to “manipulate public opinion” and engage
in corrupt practices.

Now, as
Aleksey Makarkin, the deputy general director of the Moscow Center of Political
Technologies, pointed out, “the situation in the country has changed;” and
Medvedev at least has changed his tune, although whether he, let alone Putin
who preceded and plans to succeed him have changed their past views remains to
be seen.

Makarkin
suggested that provisions calling for presidential approval of candidates were
frought with difficulties: “If the president will be a dominating figure, then
his disapproval of a candidate proposed by the parties might be viewed as an
informal veto, but an attempt to block a popular candidate would have a
negative impact on the president himself.”